Batman (Bruce Wayne)
Bruce Wayne was born to the wealthy doctor Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha, who were themselves members of the prestigious Wayne and Kane families of Gotham City, respectively. When he was very young, Bruce's mother Martha was expecting a second child to be named Thomas Wayne, Jr. However, because of her intent to found a school for the underprivileged in Gotham, she was targeted by the manipulative Court of Owls, who arranged for her to get into a car accident. She and Bruce survived, but the accident forced Martha into premature labour, and the baby was lost. While on vacation to forget about these events, the Wayne Family butler, Jarvis Pennyworth was killed by one of the Court of Owls' Talons. A letter he'd written to his son Alfred, warning him away from the beleaguered Wayne family, was never delivered. As such, Alfred - who had been an actor at the Globe Theatre at the time and a military medic before that, travelled to Gotham City to take up his father's place, serving the Waynes as butler. As he grew older, his family's reputation made Bruce restless, and he began sneaking out of school to visit Gotham City, where he wouldn't be so easily recognized. On one such outing, he was picked up by Officer Jim Gordon and his partner on their patrol. En route back to the station, Bruce witnessed Jim accepting a trenchcoat as a bribe from a tailor - though neither realized it was a bribe at the time - but Bruce would remember it as an indicator of Jim's character. After his parents came to retrieve him, the Waynes went to see the Mark of Zorro at the Monarch Theater. After the film, a mugger named Joe Chill attempted to rob them at gunpoint, and panicked, shooting both Thomas and Martha dead. - After their deaths, Bruce became obsessed with the search for meaning in their loss. He thought perhaps the mythical Court of Owls was responsible, but he never found anything to prove it. Troubled by grief, Bruce attempted to erase his memory with electroshock therapy, but chose not to go through with it, and to use his pain as a motivator. At the age of 18, he used his relationship with Erin McKillen - a daughter of the Irish mob, and with whom he attended Roxbury Academy - to locate Joe Chill, and learned that he had simply needed the money, and there was no deeper meaning to his parents' deaths. Travels and Training Fuelled by the loss of his parents, Bruce began training in martial arts and sword-fighting. After he learned the truth about Joe Chill, Bruce began travelling the world, learning the arts of stunt-driving, invention , and intimidation. Near the end of his travels, Bruce went to the Himalayas to train with Shihan Matsuda, who taught him to fight with the katana. He soon struck up a romance with the sword-sharpener's daughter, Mio. Matsuda warned him against creating personal ties with others, and to embrace his darker side. Matsuda's wife, though encouraged it, and because of Bruce's feelings for her, he inadvertently let an assassin into the Matsuda household. In the following course of events, Bruce discovered that Mio had been hired by Matsuda's wife to seduce him and then kill Matsuda. Both women and Matsuda himself were gravely injured, but before he died, Matsuda warned him that death is what would come of fostering close personal relationships. Taking this lesson to heart, and after three long years of absence, Bruce finally returned to Gotham. The Zero Year With only his mission in mind and no care for his legacy as a Wayne, Bruce moved himself out of Wayne Manor and into a brownstone on Park Row from which he based his early attempts to infiltrate the Red Hood Gang after only six weeks back. Despite trying to remain off the grid, Bruce's uncle Philip Kane had kept tabs on him and had also gained control of Wayne Enterprises in Bruce's absence, hiring strategist Edward Nygma, who advised him to have Bruce killed if he wouldn't play ball. Philip outed Bruce's return to the media. When Bruce refused to return to the company while his uncle was selling weapons, Nygma advised Philip to have Bruce killed, and the Red Hood Gang soon attempted just that by blowing up Bruce's brownstone with him inside. Injured, Bruce crawled back to Wayne Manor and, in his father's study, decided to take on the appearance of a bat. Using the fact that he was outed to his advantage, Bruce called a press conference outside the ACE Chemical plant to expose the Red Hood Gang's plans to the media. The gang attempted to disrupt it, and inside the plant, Bruce used a blackout to debut the Batsuit. Through blackmail, Philip was recruited into the Red Hood Gang, and when he failed to kill the Batman, he was shot dead. In fighting with Red Hood One, Batman knocked the man into a vat of chemicals, and he was thought dead. Despite having won that battle, Nygma returned to detonate an EMP blast that left the entire city in the dark. Commissioner Loeb declared the Batman a vigilante criminal as Bruce began investigating a series of murders committed by a disgruntled Waynetech employee, while building a jammer to prevent another EMP attack when power was restored. The ex-employee, Dr. Karl Helfern was challenging enough that Batman allied himself begrudgingly with Jim Gordon, and together they learned that Helfern was the Riddler's pawn. -#27 Their plan to defeat both men failed, and the jammer was destroyed such that when the power was restored, the Riddler stole complete control of the power grid, shutting it down and flooding the city. and In the following months, the city fell into ruin, with the Riddler nightly challenging the citizens to best him with a riddle in order to earn back civilization. Allying with Jim Gordon and Lucius Fox, Batman planned to locate the Riddler by piggybacking his signal during the challenge. The plan failed, but Batman managed to find the Riddler in the place they'd first met, and best him in a battle of wits, both restoring power and saving the city from an inevitable air-strike. Afterwards, Bruce and Lucius began rebuilding Wayne Enterprises, and Jim Gordon was promoted to Commissioner in Loeb's stead. -#33 Cross World Early in their careers, Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent met in Gotham City as the latter investigated a series of murders of Wayne Enterprises employees. They later encountered each other as Batman and Superman, distrusting one another, and then being sent to Earth 2 another universe entirely through the machinations of Kaiyo the Trickster. There, they encountered older, more competent versions of themselves. -#2 Kaiyo revealed the nature of Darkseid to them all, and explained that the other world's Batman had been harbouring a dangerous weapon in the form of a Chaos Shard, which came from a much larger crystal that the US Government had been keeping hidden. Kaiyo believed that this shard would be all that could save either world from Darkseid. The Batmen and Supermen of both worlds fought over the crystal until it was destroyed. With this outcome, Kaiyo determined that only Bruce's world would survive, and took up residence there, wiping the memories of all involved. The Justice League While investigating the appearance of Parademons, Batman encountered Green Lantern for the first time, and the two teamed up. Believing them to be aliens, the pair sought Superman for answers, and he attacked them, thinking they were a threat, prompting Lantern to call on The Flash for help until Superman was convinced of their good intentions. Joined by Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Cyborg in fighting off the Parademons attack, the team soon learned that Darkseid of Apokolips was behind the invasion. -#4 It was Batman who convinced the heroes to work together as a team, and then secretly travelled to Apokolips in search of a kidnapped Superman, whom he then rescued from Darkseid's torturers. Upon their return to Earth, they forced Darkseid back to his homeworld, and received praise and recognition. Batman insisted that they remain a team in order to maintain public approval. Early Adventures Soon after becoming Batman, Bruce allied with Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent in a war on organized crime. This put him at odds with his old friends Erin and Shannon McKillen of the Irish Mob when he convinced Harvey to run for District Attorney. Harvey Dent put the twins in prison, and Shannon committed suicide so that Erin could escape and take her revenge on Dent, killing his wife, whom Bruce had introduced him to, and disfiguring him with acid. In further efforts to eliminate organized crime in Gotham, Batman attempted to bring down the Falcone Crime Family. The upshot of this conflict saw Carmine Falcone retreat to Hong Kong, allowing the Penguin to fill the power vacuum. In an effort to take control of Gotham City, Bane ran Batman ragged, and then broke his back. , , Batman: Knightfall Some time later, Ra's al Ghul attempted to eradicate the population of Gotham City using the Ebola Gulf-A Virus, and was thwarted by the Batman. , Batman: Legacy The Batman Family Having created a prototypical version of it during the Zero Year, Jim Gordon took the risk of placing a Bat-Signal on the roof of the GCPD precinct. At its first lighting, each of the children who would one day join the Batman looked up at it in wonder. During the first year of his career, Bruce took in young Dick Grayson after his parents were murdered by Tony Zucco. Without knowing Bruce's secret, Dick would sneak out at night, hunting Zucco, and the Batman would be there to protect him every time. Eventually, he allowed Dick to see the Batcave, and Dick revealed that he'd already deduced his warden's dual identity. With the common goal of justice, the pair began fighting crime as Batman and Robin. Within another year, Barbara Gordon was trapped within her father's precinct building during a terrorist attack by a criminal awaiting extradition. As the police had been building a prototype Batsuit in order to prove the Batman was just a man, Barbara put it on and fought off the criminal using her gymnastic ability in order to protect her younger brother James, Jr. Her actions caught the real Batman's attention, and over time, she ingratiated herself with him, and he took her on as Batgirl. After just one year, she decided that she should focus on her studies, and quit. Despite that, her father's position still made her a target, and she was shot by The Joker and remained paralyzed for three years. Following Barbara's injury, Dick decided to quit being Robin and moved on to a new identity for himself as Nightwing. Sometime after that, Batman caught orphan Jason Todd trying to steal prescription drugs from Dr. Leslie Thompkins, and the doctor pleaded with him to keep Jason from the police. So, Batman took him to Wayne Manor to be looked after by Alfred Pennyworth. In the hope of getting Jason to turn over a new leaf, Bruce confessed his identity, explaining how he'd turned his pain into something good, and offered Jason the role of Robin. After training for several months, Jason learned to put his emotions into fighting crime. However, he was soon lured into chasing a woman he believed to be his mother to the middle east - a setup by the Joker. Jason was killed before Batman could save him. Eventually, Batman learned of Tim Drake - a talented young gymnast who had become obsessed with discovering his identity. After being pressed by Alfred to confront the boy, he listened as Tim announced his intention to become the new Robin. Batman warned him off, which only spurred on his quest. He began trying to gain Batman's attention by electronically stealing funds from The Penguin, who found out and targeted his home. Tim and his family were saved, but they were forced into witness protection, leaving Tim in the care of Batman, who begrudgingly agreed to take him on as Robin. Instead of taking that role, Tim devised the role of Red Robin, choosing not to be a Robin out of deference for Jason Todd. Having encountered Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins some time ago, and fallen in love with his daughter Talia, Bruce was surprised years later when Talia came to Gotham and introduced him to his son, Damian, whom she had grown in a lab at an accelerated rate and trained to lead the League from birth. She intended for Bruce to train their son in the ways she could not, and in the hope of curbing his homicidal tendencies, he took on the boy as Robin to keep a close eye on him. He later learned that Talia had been using Damian as a pawn to reunite him with her as a family, with one last chance to reform her and let their son become master of the Earth. When Bruce refused, she warned that they would be at war from that point onward. Not long after taking on Damian, though, Bruce was seemingly killed,Batman R.I.P., Final Crisis having in fact been sent back in time. While Nightwing eventually took on the role of Batman in his stead, training Damian as Robin,Batman: Long Shadows Bruce fought his way forward through time.Return of Bruce Wayne and upon his return, announced that he had been privately funding the Batman, and declared the creation of Batman Incorporated, which would be made up of vigilantes from around the world. After encountering a terrorist ring known as Leviathan, Batman Incorporated discovered that its leader was Talia al Ghul, who had returned to visit her promised war on Batman and Gotham. The Court of Owls Since his emergence, the Joker had killed more than one hundred people when one of his rampages culminated in his being caught and sent to Arkham Asylum. There, he conspired to have the Dollmaker surgically remove his face, and help him escape. Blame was cast on the Batman, and a crowd of "mourners" began to form in Robinson Park, keeping vigil in the hopes Joker would turn up alive. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne had recently revealed plans to fund improvements to Gotham City, when the GCPD uncovered a body with ties to the legend of the Court of Owls, and a warning of an attempt against Bruce's life. Batman believed the Court of Owls were just a legend, but after taking a meeting with an interested business partner in Lincoln March, Bruce was nearly killed by an assassin dressed like an owl in Wayne Tower, who miraculously survived the fall from the penthouse. Bruce refused to believe that this assassin could have been a Talon of the Court, despite rumours that his own ancestor Alan Wayne had been killed by one. Alan Wayne had designed Wayne Tower in the fist place, and upon investigation, Batman discovered that the assassin had been hiding out on a secret floor of the Tower that few could know about. After searching every other Wayne-built building in Gotham, he discovered a Talon hideout in every one. Batman's skepticism began to trouble his allies, and he was forced to admit that he had learned to doubt the Court's existence when he thought they were responsible for his parents' deaths, and found nothing. Despite this, all evidence points to the Court, with Alan Wayne's bones bearing the same markings as the murder victim he'd found. While investigating the site of Alan Wayne's death, he was knocked by a Talon into an underground labyrinth where the very much real Court of Owls trapped him for eight days, and attempted to drive him insane. There, he realized that he was just one of many victims of the labyrinth, but was too weak to prevent himself from being stabbed by a Talon. Despite this, he managed to break his way into an underground portion of the Gotham River, and was revived from cardiac arrest by Harper Row. Upon his return to the cave, Batman was greeted with the corpse of the very Talon who had stabbed him, and upon study, he learned that the Talons are undead assassins, and this one had actually been an ancestor of Dick Grayson's, who was himself intended to become a Talon. At that same time, a murderous vigilante called NoBody began attempting to win Bruce's son's loyalty away from him, encouraging him to break with Batman's no-kill policy. He soon realized that this man was Morgan Ducard, with whom he had trained in man-hunting some years ago. When Damian declined to join him, NoBody turned on him, and Batman was forced to save him. In the resulting battle, it was Damian who made the final blow and killed NoBody, causing his father to worry if he'd ever be able to train him not to perpetuate the cycle of violence. The City of Owls Urged on by Batman's interference, the Court of Owls elected to resurrect all of their undead Talons from over a century of assassinations, in order to kill off several prominent Gothamites and regain full control of Gotham City. Hundreds attacked Bruce Wayne at Wayne Manor, forcing him down into the Batcave where his secret identity was revealed. Fortunately, he survived their attack long enough to learn that exposing them to sub-zero temperatures would nullify their regenerative ability, and they were subdued. He then ensured that his own allies would be able to take care of other Talons targeting others across the city. And left the manor to ensure his business partner Lincoln March's safety. He was too late, however, to save him from his assassin. After tracking the Court of Owls back to their hideout, Batman found its members all dead - poisoned by their food. He suspected suicide until a flash of memory led him to the realization that Lincoln March was not who he'd claimed to be. After seeking him out in the ruins of a mental hospital, Batman learned that March believed himself to be Bruce's Wayne's younger brother, Thomas, whom Bruce had thought killed in a car accident caused by the Talons at the intersection of Lincoln and March. It was he who killed the Court and stole their funding. He had been taken in from the hospital by the Court and raised to believe Martha Wayne was his mother, and he grew to resent Bruce, and took the role of King of the Owls to win control of the city for himself and to kill Bruce. In their encounter, Lincoln March escaped, leading Bruce to assume the Court of Owls would one day return. Talia al Ghul, meanwhile, had placed a $500,000,000 bounty on her own son's head as a means of distracting Batman and Robin from intervening in her criminal efforts. Despite her successes, her father begged her to call off her war with the detective. In response, she wrested control of the League of Assassins away from him. In the mean time, spurred by his encounter with NoBody, Damian began searching Gotham's sewers for a gift for his father that would show he had learned empathy and compassion, all while attempting to prove to his predecessors that he was the better Robin. Despite warnings from his father of the danger of going out on patrol with a bounty on his head, Damian returned to the cave to gift his father with a single pearl from Martha Wayne's pearl necklace, which had fallen apart on the day she was shot. -#14 Elsewhere in the city, one of the Penguin's underlings began a plot to undermine his employer and gain control of his empire, dubbing himself the Emperor Penguin. Death of the Family Having waited for nearly a year in hiding, the Joker reappeared at the GCPD Headquarters and killed several officers to signal his return to Batman, and to retrieve his face from the evidence locker. Batman's allies offered their help, but he refused it, believing the Joker's master plan was between the two of them alone. The Joker then threatened to recreate one of his first recorded murders with Gotham's Mayor, but he killed all of the guards outside the Mayor's office instead, leaving disturbing frowns instead of the trademark Joker smiles on their faces. Seeing a pattern in Joker's twisted recreations of past crimes, Batman went to the A.C.E. Chemical building, where a distraction provided by a reluctant Harley Quinn allowed the Joker to go to Wayne Manor and attack Alfred. Once free, Batman returned to the Manor to find a cassette tape revealing that Alfred had been kidnapped and tortured. Intent on sharing this news with Commissioner Gordon, he found that Jim had been dosed with an anticoagulant that caused him to bleed out from his pores, requiring immediate hospitalization. Confiding in Nightwing, Batman asked him to keep Alfred's kidnapping a secret, insisting that the Joker had not yet deduced his identity. Meeting next at the Gotham Reservoir, the Joker claimed that he did know everyone's identities, and promised to kill each of the allies who had made Batman weak within 72 hours. Bruce's allies compelled him to admit that after his second encounter with the Joker, he had found one of the Joker's cards in the Batcave, but had never believed that his identity was compromised. Insisting that his allies remain safe in the cave, Batman followed a lead to Arkham Asylum, where he learned that the Joker had taken over without being noticed. There, Batman discovered that the Joker has renovated and rearranged the building into a kind of castle, of which Batman was King, and he was Jester. Each of Batman's enemies played a role in this fantasy, helping to keep the Batman at the top of his game, while his allies softened and weakened him. The only way to find out what happened to his kidnapped allies, whom the Joker had captured in the interim, was to go along with the plan and electrocute himself. , , , , Batman woke at a dinner table in the Batcave surrounded by his allies, all with bandaged faces. Removing the lids from the dinner platters in front of them, the Joker revealed each of their faces. He believed that Batman wanted him to kill his family; to be free of emotional ties that held him back. Faced with the choice of letting the Joker kill his family, or to kill them himself by igniting the gasoline they were doused with, Batman started the fire, and broke a hole through the roof, allowing the water above to drown the flames. After discovering that the bandages and severed faces were a fake-out, Batman chased down the Joker, who chose to fall into a chasm rather than allow Batman to reveal either of their identities, and spoil his fantasy. Despite everyone being alive and well, Bruce's insistence on keeping secrets the Joker's taunts drove a wedge between he and his family. Meanwhile, having taken control of the Penguin's empire thanks to his involvement with the Joker's plan, Emperor Penguin abused Dr. Kirk Langstrom's serum to transform the entire 900 Block of Gotham city into Man-Bats. After injecting himself with it, though, Batman defeated him easily, and saw him put in Blackgate Penitentiary. The Demon Star & Gotham's Most Wanted Armed with the League of Assassins' power, Leviathan began taking over the city of Gotham, and in an effort to gain more information, Batman took on the identity of Matches Malone to infiltrate the crime ring. He was, however, betrayed to Leviathan and sentenced to death, requiring Damian - who had been grounded in the Batcave, to defy his father's wishes to save him. Bruce managed to escape on his own steam, and upon reuniting with the surviving Batman Incorporated members, he warned them that they would be facing 30 of the world's greatest assassins. Though they were successful in defeating the assassins, Batman worried that Damian would have to return to his mother, or there would be dire consequences. He had seen those consequences come to fruition in a foreboding vision, earlier. After learning of an attack on the other members of Batman Incorporated, Batman rushed to the site, where he encountered a series of traps leading to the top floor of a building. On the way, Talia taunted him by warning that he would have to choose between his city and his son. At the top of the building, he encountered her creature, the Heretic, who had killed Batman's allies, and soon threw Bruce from the roof. Batman was captured by Man-Bat Commandos and put in a death trap by Talia, who had taken over Wayne Tower in the meantime. Against Batman's wishes, Alfred allowed Damian to leave the Batcave, once again, and help his father. While Batman escaped his trap, Damian faced the Heretic alone, with his call on Talia to put a stop to the monster unheeded. Though he fought well, Damian was no match for it, and he was skewered on the Heretic's blade. Thwarted in avenging his son, Bruce was thrown from the Tower, and later held a small, private funeral for Damian, even as his city was overrun by Leviathan and the Mayor declared him a menace, forcing Wayne Enterprises to cut funding to Batman Incorporated. Borrowing the Suit of Sorrows to face Talia and the Heretic, Batman transformed himself into a bat-creature While Batman pummelled the Heretic and discovered with disgust that he was a clone of Damian, his allies learned that the international spy community had allied against Batman Inc., though they still needed the organization to stop Talia's plan. The Heretic escaped Batman only to be executed by Talia for failing to follow her orders. Batman and Talia came to a final confrontation in the Batcave, with the woman forcing him to choose between taking her life or giving his life along with his city - with the trick being that she had already poisoned him. In a bid for Batman's life, Wingman offered the Oroboro device Talia sought, as a distraction, as the headmistress of Spyral shot her in the head, freeing the city of Leviathan's grasp. In the aftermath, Bruce Wayne was arrested, but charges were dropped. Upon his return to the manor, he and Alfred discovered that the corpses of both Damian and Talia had been dug up and stolen by Ra's al Ghul. Requiem for Damian Damian's death left Bruce an emotional wreck, compounded by the fact that his romantic interest, Natalya Trusevich had been murdered by the Mad Hatter when he allowed her to get close to him. He began going through the five stages of grief, beginning with denial. Despite briefly being drawn together by their loss, Bruce began alienating his family. In the meantime, Carrie Kelley, whom Damian had hired to give him acting lessons, began to look for him since he'd missed his lessons, but Bruce refused to admit to her that he'd died. He also refused to admit that Damian was gone to himself, and recklessly attempted to reverse-engineer Frankenstein's immortality to revive his son. At Alfred's urging, Red Robin put a stop to that plan. Despite his attempts to get rid of her, Alfred hired Carrie as a dog-walker for Titus, requiring Bruce to keep lying about Damian's fate. Distracting himself, he tried to convince Red Hood to explain how he had come back from death, resulting in an angry confrontation. Likewise, Batgirl caught Bruce being reckless with his life, and tried to remind him not to try to trade away what he had left, but it only made Bruce angrier to know she was right. After similar encounters with both Catwoman and Nightwing, Bruce began to accept that he had lost a son, and that he was not completely responsible, which allowed him to see that Alfred, too, had blamed himself and been going through pain. While attempting to recover from his grief, Batman was faced with the threat of The Wrath - a cop-killing arms dealer who had a vendetta against the GCPD. -#24 After bringing him to justice, Batman experienced a blast from the past when Erin McKillen returned to Gotham to meet with the other crime families in the hopes of using solidarity between them to regain control of the city from the "freaks." She learned that she would have to stay in the city if she intended to make that plan happen, but when her safe house was raided, the news of her return reached Two-Face and Batman. Their shared history led to confrontation, wherein Batman was forced to stand between two old friends who were bent on revenge against one another. All the while, the crime families hoped to kill both Erin and Two-Face as an assertion of their superiority over the freaks, culminating in a planned live, televised execution. Batman thwarted their plan, and Erin was arrested and incarcerated in the upshot. Two-Face, meanwhile, began to question his identity, and upon returning to his hotel room, shot himself through the head. -#28 Forever Evil In the hopes of ridding the world of evil, Pandora tried to have members of the Justice League open Pandora's Box for her, believing that their virtuousness would prevent the calamity that occurred when she opened it. Unbeknownst to her, a secret organization was using her as a pawn in a ploy to have the three Justice Leagues come into conflict. The leagues split up in order to discover their own solutions to the puzzle of Pandora's Box.Trinity War Batman headed the team who believed that there was a scientific explanation for the box and its apparent affect on Supermam. Upon their eventual convergence upon the box, the Leagues discovered that it was a doorway to another world, from which the Crime Syndicate emerged, and imprisoned the majority of the Justice Leagues within the Firestorm Matrix. Only Batman and Catwoman evaded the Syndicate's imprisonment, having escaped to S.T.A.R. Labs with the remains of Cyborg, whose robotic components forcibly separated from his body to become Grid. Fortunately, they were able to pass Victor on to his father in the Red Room. There, though, Batman learned that Nightwing's secret identity had been revealed by the Syndicate, and he and Catwoman decided to seek him out and rescue him from their imprisonment. Together, they travelled to the Batcave, where Batman retrieved the weapons he had kept as contingency plans against the rest of the Justice League, hoping they would be effective against their Earth 3 counterparts. While searching for more resources in a Wayne Enterprises storage facility, Bruce and Selina encountered Lex Luthor and his followers, who had a similar plan to counter the Syndicate with their weaknesses. Their confusion at Batman's survival was smothered by the arrival of Power Ring. Hoping to counter him, Batman donned a Sinestro Corps Ring, only to have it removed and destroyed. Fortunately, Sinestro, himself was drawn by the ring's energy, and killed Power Ring, suggesting that Batman join the Sinestro Corps, if ever he had the opportunity to wear a yellow ring again. After being forced to follow Lex Luthor's lead, begrudgingly, the pair discovered Nightwing trapped within an Apokoliptian device called the Murder Machine, deep within the ruins of the Justice League Satellite. Bruce took the opportunity to apologize for his secretive nature driving Dick and the rest of his family away after the Joker's attack. Dick warned, though, that the device he was strapped to was synced with his heart rate, such that they would either blow up with the device, or they would have to kill him. Despite Dick's begging, Bruce refused to leave him. More decisively, Lex chose to suffocate Dick until his heart stopped, buying them the time to get him out of the machine and then resuscitate him. He had, in fact, given Dick a pill that would stop his heart temporarily, requiring a shot of adrenaline before brain death. Once Dick was revived, he, Batman, and Catwoman escaped to seek out the remainder of the Justice League, and on the way, reunited with Cyborg, who explained the plan to use the Lasso of Truth to pull the heroes out of the Firestorm Matrix. With Steve Trevor out of action, though, Martian Manhunter appointed Batman to be the one to wield the Lasso, because of his connection to Wonder Woman. Using it, he saved the imprisoned heroes while Lex and his allies defeated the Crime Syndicate. Afterwards, despite his closeness with Catwoman, Batman insisted that they could not start a romance together, and returned home with Dick. Having been presumed dead, Batman offered him an opportunity to take advantage of his compromised identity by joining Spyral. Batman's own identity had been compromised as well, though, as Lex Luthor now knew that he was Bruce Wayne. In the meantime, Gotham had become a war zone between the inmates of Arkham Asylum and the inmates of Blackgate Penitentiary the latter of whom were led by Bane.Forever Evil: Arkham War As victor, Bane claimed the mantle of the Bat for himself, requiring Batman to wrest it back from him. When Bane was safely imprisoned in Arkham, Bruce Wayne promised funds to improve the asylum's security and to the city's restoration. Batman Eternal While on a case involving kidnappings by Professor Pyg, Commissioner Gordon chased a suspect into the Aviation Museum subway station, where an apparent illusion caused him to believe the man had a gun. He fired a warning shot which struck a control box, derailing an oncoming train and killing hundreds of innocent people. This resulted in his arrest by Jack Forbes. This was the first strike in a campaign to strip Batman of all he cared about. After the arrest, Batman assured his friend that he would do all he could to prove his innocence, though Jim felt he was indisputably guilty. He set about identifying the man Jim had shot at, and through him, realized that Carmine Falcone had finally returned to Gotham. Unfortunately, Batman's investigations were hampered when interim Commissioner Forbes declared him a high priority police target. Worse, because of his past associations with Batman, Jim was denied bail and sentenced to serve his time in Blackgate Penitentiary to await trial. Naturally, this enraged Jim's daughter Barbara, who became increasingly violent as Batgirl, requiring Batman's intervention. After a fruitless encounter with Carmine Falcone, Batman helped Batgirl to identify a suspect seen in the subway surveillance tapes, to enable her plan to clear Jim's name. He later learned that Red Robin had also begun a separate investigation into a nanobot virus attacking children in the Narrows, but himself remained focused on the mounting gang war between Falcone and The Penguin. Meanwhile, Jim Corrigan alerted Batman to strange goings on at Arkham Asylum, prompting him to send Batwing with Jim to investigate, while he followed up on an explosion associated with the gang war. Several more explosions saw the Iceberg Casino destroyed, and while Batman apprehended Professor Pyg at one of the scenes, warning him that he was being used by Falcone, Commissioner Forbes later released him to spite the vigilante. Forbes' attitude toward Batman only served to fuel the ongoing gang war, and his vendetta against Batman reached a head when he arranged a trap, surrounding Batman at the Bat-Signal with a complete riot squad. Saved by quick thinking on the part of recent addition to the GCPD, Jason Bard, Batman escaped to Hong Kong in the hopes of investigating what Falcone was doing there since he left Gotham. There, Batman of Japan explained that Falcone had been winning a five year long gang war until he abruptly left for Gotham, allowing his rival to take his place. When Batman and Jiro faced that rival, an agent who was on the same case was stabbed, and Bruce identified her as Julia Pennyworth - Alfred's daughter. While Julia convalesced in the Wayne Manor, Bruce met with Red Hood, warning him to keep an eye on Batgirl, to make sure she didn't let her rage go to far. Then, after learning that Falcone's attempt to take Catwoman hostage had seen both of them becoming hostages to Professor Pyg, Batman rescued Catwoman, just before the GCPD arrived with kill-orders on his head. After warning her to stay out of the gang war, Catwoman revealed that Falcone had only come back to Gotham because he had been tipped off to a bigger plan. He was not the mastermind. As Jim Gordon was transported to his trial, Batman visited him in disguise, promising again to prove his friend's innocence, but Jim warned him to remain focused on the gang war instead. In aid of that effort, Jason Bard and Harvey Bullock called on Batman with a plan to get the GCPD off of his tail by pretending that the police were raiding Batman's safe houses, but actually raiding Falcone's. When Forbes realized what they'd done, he was cornered by Vicki Vale, preventing him from releasing the criminals they'd caught. -#13 Within a short time, Bard had incriminated Forbes and seen both the Penguin and Falcone arrested and bound for Blackgate. Though Batman was impressed, he felt he couldn't yet trust Bard to do the right thing the right way. Later, Batman and Bard became involved with Killer Corc in the search fro a little girl named Jade, who had been kidnapped by thralls of Deacon Blackfire. They soon discovered that she was meant to be a sacrifice, tortured by the Ten-Eyed Man, and rescued her from him. -#20 Having won the mayor's support through coercion and with the end of the gang war under his belt, Jason Bard was made the new police commissioner, while Jim Gordon was found guilty of 123 counts of manslaughter. Batman, meanwhile, sought Carmine Falcone in Blackgate, and confirmed for himself that the Roman had come to Gotham at the invitation of someone else who had predicted Jim Gordon's fall from grace. In Bruce's absence, Hush broke into Wayne Manor and attacked Alfred with a dose of Fear Toxin directly into his brain. Meanwhile, Jason Bard proved he could not be trusted by destroying the evidence that would exonerate Jim Gordon, and releasing Zachary Gate from prison. Gate attacked the Beacon Tower construction site, requiring Batman's attention, while Julia Pennyworth followed her father's cryptic instructions to discover the existence of the Batcave, and Bruce Wayne's identity. Upon confronting Gate, Batman discovered that Hush was responsible for the attack on Alfred. Despite saving the building, the city suffered from seismic tremors as a result of Gate's device, and the Mayor agreed to place Gotham under martial law. Learning of Jason Bard's betrayal from Julia, Batman investigated his apartment, only to find a hologram of Hush taunting him, and springing a trap that would pin the destruction of Bard's apartment on the vigilante. Batman survived the explosion, returning to the Batcave, where he finally introduced the other members of his team to Julia, deciding to rely on them more and clear the air after what happened with the Joker. While hunting for Hush, Batman had his first - albeit indirect - encounter with The Spoiler, who used him to save her from assassin Eduardo Flamingo. Hoping to follow Flamingo to his employer, Batman was lead to the Moffatt Building, where he discovered the aftermath of a gang dispute over custody of Jade McKillen - heiress to the McKillen Crime Family. Unfortunately, she was killed, and her own role in that murder led Catwoman to give up her costume and accept her father's offer to become the head of the Calabrese Family. While preventing police helicopters from shooting on a civilian riot, Batman was able to witness the beam of mystical energy caused by Deacon Blackfire at Arkham, which in turn caused the asylum's foundations to crumble, and sink into the collapsed tunnels below it. Alfred was inside. Surrounded by police, Batman had no choice but to dive into the wreckage to find him. While there, he encountered Joker's Daughter who had been sent to him as a distraction by someone. Using the Batplane's sonic burst to distract the police, Batman escaped the crater in hopes of catching up with a reported sighting Hush in an alley downtown. Alfred, in the meantime, survived thanks to help from Bane, and found his way to a secret satellite Batcave. Batman found Hush attempting to kill Spoiler, but failed to catch either of them, giving up to instead rescue Batwing from the rubble of Arkham. Later that night, an explosion caused by Hush destroyed one of Batman's weapons and equipment caches, killing several innocents and pinning blame on Batman himself. Together, Batman and Julia began racing to the rest of Batman's caches in the hope of destroying them before Hush could turn them against him. In the mean time, the mayor put pressure on Lucius Fox to relinquish control of Wayne Enterprises to the government because of the company's ties with Batman Incorporated, and when Batman finally caught up with Hush and defeated him, he realized too late that he had been stripped of all of his resources and that Hush was not the mastermind behind the attacks on him either. With Hush locked away in the Batcave, Batman learned that his friend Lucius Fox was in the pocket of Jason Bard, who obviously had his own agenda, besides Hush's manipulations. He set a trap for Batman, using Lucius to trap him within the Batmobile, and send him crashing through Wayne Tower, and out the other side, to his death. Thanks to quick thinking from Julia, he survived to question Bard as to his motives. Jason's former partner and girlfriend, Jodie Hawkins, had been killed thanks to a copycat vigilante in Detroit, and he was lured to Gotham for vengeance by Hush. Unfortunately, because Jason was merely a pawn of Hush - who was himself a pawn, Batman was no closer to knowing who had framed Jim Gordon. While waiting for a new lead, Batman began to track down the Arkham inmates who had escaped during the collapse. After locating them thanks to a tip from Catwoman, Batman received another hint from the Scarecrow that the Riddler might be able to help him figure out the mystery. Batman tracked the Riddler to a casino on Miller Mountain, where he enlisted his unwilling foe in helping him find the one behind the attacks, though the Riddler reminded that Batman should already know who it was. -#40 Meanwhile, Batman's allies dealt with the nanovirus outbreak in the Narrows, and he arrived in time to learn that the Mad Hatter was also invited to the attack on Gotham - and that Harper Row had found her way into his circle of vigilante allies - whether he had wanted her to be or not. -#42 Endgame While recovering from an attack by the Scarecrow, Batman was attacked in his new downtown Batcave by Wonder Woman. When he realized that the entire League had come to kill him, Batman activated a protocol he had prepared should he ever have to take them down. Systematically bringing down each one of them, he held his own until Superman arrived, simultaneously revealing that this attack was engineered by the Joker, who had returned at last. Thanks to some handy Kryptonite gum, Batman survived, but learned that each member of the league had been targeted with a specific strain of Joker Venom. He travelled to the ruins of Arkham Asylum in search of clues, where he encountered employee Eric Border. To his surprise, Eric locked him in a cell, revealing that he had been the Joker in disguise the whole time, and promising to unleash a virus on the city. To ensure Batman would see it happen, he paralyzed him with a toxic gas. After recovering, he learned that the virus had already spread, and was resistant to efforts to develop a cure. He sought patient zero at the hospital for an antibody, but discovered that patient zero was Joe Chill, the murderer of his parents. Chill was forced into a recreation of the Wayne murder using Duke Thomas in Bruce's place, and Batman only managed to save Duke before learning that Jim Gordon had been attacked by the Joker in the meantime. Robin Rises Eventually, Batman decided at last to begin the search for Ra's al Ghul and the stolen bodies of Damian and Talia. He joined with Aquaman in search of the island where Damian had been raised, hoping to find them there, but they arrived too late to stop Ra's from escaping with their sarcophagi to Paradise Island. With Wonder Woman's help, he learned that Ra's intended to use a Chaos Crystal in a Lazarus Pit on the island to revive his daughter and grandson. After that plan was disrupted, Ra's escaped to Nanda Parbat, where a battle ensued, and Damian's sarcophagus and the Chaos Crystal were stolen by Glorious Godfrey, and taken back to Apokolips, spurring Batman to eschew the Justice League's advice against it, and go there, after his son. Ignoring the League's dissent, he snuck onto the Satellite to steal a specialized Batsuit designed to help him survive against the threat of Apokolips. Without the league's support, he called on his family for help instead. He urged them to look after Gotham in his absence, forcing them to stay behind while he journeyed to Apokolips. While Batman fought his way to Glorious Godfrey, his family decided that they would not allow him to fight this battle alone, and kidnapped Cyborg, forcing him to open a Boom Tube that would get them to Apokolips as well. Before they left, Alfred gave each of them a new costume resembling that of Robin to remind them who they fought for. After questioning Godfrey, Batman united with his allies and learned that Darkseid's son Kalibak was using the Chaos Crystal and Damian's sarcophagus to power a weapon called the Chaos Cannon that could destroy an entire moon. Batman's arrival on Apokolips roused even Darkseid himself, and he was eager to get revenge on Batman for his defeat at the hands of the Justice League. In their fight, he tossed Batman into the Chaos Cannon's fuel tank, freeing Damian's sarcophagus. When he then attempted to finish Batman with the Omega Sanction, Batman took a shard of the Chaos Crystal, and absorbed the energy before escaping through Cyborg's Boom Tube. Though his Hellbat suit threatened to kill him, Batman thrust the charged up shard into Damian's chest, and restored him to life before succumbing to his wounds. Fortunately, he recovered in time to help stop Kalibak, who followed them through the Boom Tube home. It was then that they discovered Damian's resurrection had given him super-human abilities, which he used to beat Kalibak back into the Tube, which Cyborg closed behind him. Though they were safe, Batman would from that point have to deal with the prospect of a super-powered, ten-year-old son. | Powers = | Abilities = * * * * * * * * * * * * | Weaknesses = | Equipment = * Batsuit: The costume Batman wears is composed by Kevlar and a little percentage of titanium; it's bullet-proof and resistant to various types of attack (explosions, impacts, falls, etc...). It's also flame-retarding and insulating. The gloves and the boots are reinforced to rebound the impact of punches and kicks. The gloves have also some metallic blades on their sides. The cape is super-light and it can be used to glide. The mask has a little percentage of lead, which shields the face of Batman from x-ray powers or x-ray technology, and incorporates an infrared and night vision viewer, auditory sensors and a sonar. The mask is accessorized with some security systems (aggravating gas, electric blasts, etc.), like the utility belt, and integrates a transmitter receiver device de voice and video. * Utility Belt: Batman keeps most of his personal field equipment in a signature piece of apparel, a yellow utility belt.The utility belt has a button to call the car in a few appearances on Justice League, and a command for teleportation. Over the years it has contained items such as plastic explosives, nerve toxins, batarangs, smoke bombs, a fingerprint kit, a cutting tool, a grappling hook gun, torches, and a "re-breather" breathing device. Superman had entrusted Batman with a ring made of kryptonite, to be used should the Man of Steel ever need to be reined in (due to being mind-controlled by a villain, etc.). The kryptonite ring is contained in a lead pocket, in order to shield Batman from its radiations. The belt has also its own automatic security systems. | Transportation = * Batboat * Batcycle * Batmobile * Batplane | Weapons = * Batarang | Notes = * Batman was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, first appearing in . However, in the Prime Earth continuity, which takes place Post-Flashpoint, his first appearance as part of the DC Universe is in the first issue of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's New 52 ''Justice League'' series. | Trivia = | Recommended = | Wikipedia = | Links = }}